:s? 



THE COLLEGE IDEAL 

AND AMERICAN LIFE 

: AN ADDRESS BY 

NATHANIEL BUTLER 





nth Co 



THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND 
AMERICAN LIFE 



AN ADDRKSS 

DELIVERED AT THE SEVENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF 
COLBY UNIVERSITY 



NATHANIEL BUTLER 

DIRECTOR THE UNIVERSITY EXTENSION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 



JULY 3, 1895 



PORTLAND, MAINE 

PRESS OFjTHE THURSTON PRINT 
1896 



Sf^ 






17062 




The College Ideal and American Life. 



Twenty-five years ago, on the second day of August, 
President Champlin with these words closed his oration at 
the fiftieth anniversary of Waterville College : " Stand- 
ing now, as we do, at the middle point of the first century 
of the existence of the institution, whether we look back- 
ward or forward, have we not reason to thank God and 
take courage ? The College has been useful, the Univer- 
sity, I have no doubt, is destined to a still higher useful- 
ness. The foundations are already laid, and well laid, and 
the superstructure, I am confident, will gradually rise in 
fitting beauty and proportions. It will have a history 
to be recounted, I have no doubt, at the close of another 
half-century. And as the centuries roll on, chapter after 
chapter will have to be added to this history, till some 
future generation, looking back over its whole course, and 
estimating the influence which has gone forth from it to 
bless the world, will come to realize, if we do not now, how 
great a boon to a community is a Christian institution of 
learning, established and sustained and nurtured up to a 
high purpose, by the prayers, the labors, and the contribu- 
tions of the wise and the good." 

No man was so well able as Dr. Champlin to sum up 
what the College had been, and to predict the usefulness 
of the University. President Small, in his sketch in the 
New England Magazine of August, 1888, declared that 
Dr. Champlin was the real founder of Colby University. 
No one will question the justice of that assertion. It is 



4 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 

true that, on the day of his resignation, the College was 
half a century old ; and that the events of the half-cen- 
tury, in a vital sense made, possible all that has since come 
to pass. Yet the life of the College, narrowly conceived, 
according to the ideal long prevalent in this country, had 
been starved and enfeebled by poverty and disaster. Dr. 
Champlin's skilful management, his heroic endeavor, and 
his determination to enlarge the resources of the College, 
were providentially crowned with success just at the open- 
ing of a new era in the history of all American colleges, 
because a new era in American life. 

No one here need be reminded that the last twenty-five 
years constituted such a period — a period unlike any that 
preceded it, a period presenting entirely new problems, 
industrial, social, political, religious. The College could 
justify its existence only by being vitally related to these 
problems, and by leading, either directly or indirectly, in 
their solution. The work that Dr. Champlin did made it 
possible for Colby to sustain her own part in the years 
that have since passed. This possibility his successors 
have not failed to understand and to make real. 

It will not be necessary at this time to follow in detail 
the history which leads up to this anniversary. The story 
of its first half-century has long been in your hands, 
written by Dr. Champlin. It is a story of bitter and 
heroic struggle, and of faith and endurance, renowned 
because of the final achievement. As for the twenty-five 
years now closing, one has but to recall the names of 
Robins, and Pepper, and Small, and Whitman, and events 
pass before him in rapid review. 

There are some of us here to-day who, as undergraduates 
and as alumni, have watched Colby University during pre- 
cisely this period of twenty-five years. As undergraduates, 



THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 5 

we saw its foundation securely laid by our own President. 
Then, from a distance, we have seen Robins creating for 
the College new ideals, giving it new character and reputa- 
tion, literally transfusing into it his own life, and impart- 
ing to it impulses which are felt to-day ; Pepper, wisely 
conserving what the years had wrought, stimulating a 
completer development, engaging for the college a livelier 
denominational interest, creating closer relations between 
faculty and students by inaugurating the Board of Con- 
ference, and still more surely and strongly establishing the 
College in the public confidence; Small, marking out for 
it an aggressive policy of educational propagandism, giving 
it a unique position in reference to coeducation, bring- 
ing it into touch with sociological questions, and commend- 
ing the College to a yet wider constituency ; until, under 
the present masterful and inspiring leadership of her 
Executive [President Whitman] retaining all the good of 
the past, and tactfully responsive to new demands, at a 
time when colleges attract the most generous endowments 
of wealth, and engage the very first scholarly and executive 
abilty, Colby University in all these respects occupies a 
place in the first rank. 

Each of her leaders seems to have been sent at the time 
when his characteristic work was needed. A comparison 
of the catalogue of 1870 with that last issued is nothing 
short of startling in what it reveals. The intervening cat- 
alogues, and the published reports of the presidents, are a 
record of almost uninterrupted building up — the steady 
evolution of a college. Within the period covered, the 
number of instructors has been more than doubled. New 
departments have been added in quick and wise response 
to the demands of the time. The Battle of the Books is 
peacefully over. The ancients and the moderns arerecon- 



6 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 

oiled. Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, time-honored resi- 
dents, have entered into delightful companionship with 
Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Geology ; with History 
Economics, Biblical and General Literature. Rational 
methods, applied in laboratories and with apparatus, have 
taken the place of exact committal of scientific text-books, 
varied occasionally by some more or less successful tricks 
performed by the professor before his wondering class. 
These were well named "experiments." The present wise 
system of electives was not dreamed of at Colby twenty- 
five years ago. The report on hazing and college barbar- 
ism has fallen obsolete, and in its place one reads the 
report of the instructor in gymnastics, and the somewhat 
varying, always honorable, prevailingly brilliant record of 
the Colby team in the field. 

The record of the student enrollment is an interesting 
study. In 1870, the total was 53. With steady additions 
this rose, in 1879, to 155. From that time it decreased, 
until, in 1886, there were 118 students in attendance. 
Since 1886, an uninterrupted increase has brought the 
enrollment to more than four times that of the begin- 
ning of this period. At no time has it been more appar- 
ent than now, that Colby University is needed just where 
she is. 

The names of Colby and Coburn and Shannon will 
ever be associated with this story of progress. Nor must 
we forget the faithful counselors of these whom we have 
named. All honor to the devoted men of the past, who 
stood by Waterville College in her struggles, and lived to 
rejoice in the prosperity of the University — to Hamlin 
and Wording and Shailer and Bosworth, to Wilson and 
Merrill and Sheldon and Sturtevant and Butler and Han- 
son. Honor to the men who stood with these and who 



THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. J 

are still with us — to Small and Ricker and Giddings and 
Shaw, to Drummond and Thompson and Bakeman and 
Alden, to Dunton and Bonney and Crane, to Webb and 
Burrage and Bullen, to Smith and Foster and Hall and 
Taylor. Honor, too, to the instructors who have wrought 
here wholly within this period of twenty-five years, who 
have given new life, new reputation, new efficiency to the 
College, and who are its strength to day. This, gentle- 
men, is a roll of honor. What a past and present are 
here ! Between colleges and universities with such a his- 
tory as this, there can be no comparison as between 
greater or less. Scattered over the land, they are like 
electric lamps in a great city. Each has its own function. 
None fills the place of the other. If one grows dim, or 
goes out, the general illumination is less and a distinct 
region is plunged into darkness. Colby's luster was 
never brighter than to-day. 

But this occasion has for us a deeper interest than that 
of mere reminiscence. The significance of a college is 
not found in what has happened to it, but in that for 
which it stands. And it is because Colby is to-day one of 
the best types of the American college that her existence 
is of significance and the celebration of this anniversary, 
of interest. No American college has in all its history 
stood more faithfully to the ideal of a safe and sound 
culture — a culture not withdrawn from life, but intimately 
and necessarily concerned with life. Nor does the history 
of any institution illustrate more clearly the successive 
stages through which the American college has expanded 
its early and simple ideal so as to meet the complex con- 
ditions of modern life. Colby has steadily moved, not 
away from the ideal, but towards its more complete reali- 
zation. Thus alone could she justify her existence in a 



8 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 

century which insists that only what is fruitful shall live. 
Thefage^^has cried out against the colleges, but, at the 
same time, from the colleges the age has drawn its best 
resources. For this reason, college anniversaries are 
incomparably the most important of our many public days. 
They commemorate the fact that the characteristic and 
wholesome tone of American life has been due more than 
to any other one thing, to the fact that it has been from 
the veryifirst dominated by the college ideal. No other 
celebrations are of such import in what they commemorate 
and emphasize — namely, that the ideal of the American 
college pervading American life has given it its healthful 
tone and is to be its savor in the time to come. 

What that ideal was, and how it was to influence 
American life, was shown in that most significant event 
in the early history of this country — the founding of Har- 
vard college. Occurring as early as 1636, it was signifi- 
cant at once of the character of the Massachusetts 
colonists and of the course of New England, which is to 
say. North American developement. The importance 
attaching to this event was hardly apparent in what has 
justly been termed the little " Wilderness Seminary," 
whose faculty consisted of a president and two tutors, and 
whose student enrollment numbered twenty or thirty. 
But the purpose of the College, set forth in its charter, 
was a germ capable of almost infinite evolution. That 
purpose, thus declared at the first, was " the instruction of 
the English and Indian youth in knowledge and godly- 
nes." It is to this plainly avowed purpose — to this tra- 
dition faithfully handed down — this ideal ever more 
and more clearly apprehended; — it is to this, that the 
immense importance of the early institution of the Ameri- 
can college is due. "Knowledge and Godlynes," Science 



THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 9 

and Religion, Art and Conscience — by whatever name we 
call them — these we have come to recognize as the essen- 
tial, and in a sense coordinate elements of sound culture. 
And as we have come to recognize more completely this 
dual nature of sound culture, our condition has likewise 
improved, our greatness has expanded. In the past, so 
far as we have been able to withstand what was hostile to 
our welfare, we have done it through the inspiration of 
this ideal. So far as we have made positive advance 
in national expansion, it has come through faithfulness to 
to the same ideal. In a sentence, the American college 
has given to this country, in larger measure than is true 
of any other agency or institution, the best in our national 
life ; to the American college, more than to anything else, 
under God, must we look for guidance out of present 
perils and to future good. 

Signs are not wanting that there is keen appreciation of 
this fact. A writer in a recent number of one of the lead- 
ing magazines (Atlantic, May, 1895, p. 103), asserts that, 
" of all the institutions of the country, the colleges are 
those which seem to be at this moment making the swift- 
est progress, and to have the brightest promise for the 
future." And he points out that " they are supplying 
exactly those things which European critics have hitherto 
found lacking in America, and they are contributing to 
her political as well as to her contemplative life elements 
of inestimable worth." And, comparing our colleges with 
German universities, he adds, " Inseparable from our col- 
leges is the glory of a closer connection with the manifold 
and active life of the country to which they belong, and of 
which they are the loyal servants." 

If one desires substantial proof that what this writer as- 
serts is generally felt to be true, let him note the fact that 



lO THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 

within the last six months upwards of three and one-half 
millions of dollars have been donated to these institutions ; 
while, if one includes the gifts of Rockefeller and of Stan- 
ford and of others who have given during the five years 
just passed, the sum thus devoted reaches an enormous and 
most significant total. All this indicates that, whether 
clearly or vaguely, we are looking to the colleges as guides 
and safeguards in the midst of these changing times ; that 
we are fortifying ourselves against future perils, not by 
organizing an army, but by building and strengthening 
colleges. If this were national policy, rather than private 
endowment, nothing could be wiser. For, as these insti- 
tutions have in the past given us the best in our social and 
public life, so they must be the guarantors of the future. 
As things are now, nothing is more to be desired than that 
American youth should enter life through the American 
college. More and more we shall need men and women 
who can think and lead. In state, church, army, navy, 
the college-trained man has been the leader, the counsel- 
lor, the initiator of far-reaching measures of good. At 
this moment, college-trained men and women are at the 
heart of municipal reforms, civic federations, social settle- 
ments, university extension, charitable endowments, free 
hospitals. Christian leagues, guilds of every good name, 
bands of men and women devoting themselves to the 
practice and promulgation of the will of God for men. 

The same appears to be true in the realms of industry 
and commerce. Actual facts seem to establish the con- 
clusion that the business of the world is to-day dominated 
by the college-trained man. The ideal held and incul- 
cated by the colleges is, and is to be, the determining 
factor in American life. It will operate in homes, in mu- 
nicipalities, in legislatures. If that ideal is sound and 



THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. II 

complete, there is ground for the strongest confidence that 
problems will be rightly solved and perils safely encoun- 
tered, that new social conditions will be understood, that 
public policy will be wisely directed, that there will be a 
richer life, a higher citizenship. We shall agree that there 
can be no better statement of a complete ideal of fitness 
for life than the simple phrase of Harvard's charter, 
"knowledge and godliness." We are in no danger of 
neglecting the former of these two. We think we have 
developed this side of education almost to perfection. 
But let us ask what, precisely, is our ideal of culture, and 
what is the precise place of the second element — the 
spiritual — in the complete scheme .'' 

Perhaps this country has produced, on the whole, no 
more complete embodiment of the American ideal of cul- 
ture than James Russell Lowell. In the Forum for Octo- 
ber, 1 891, Archdeacon Farrar, writing of Mr. Lowell, said 
that it was " a part of his [Lowell's] training to be 
familiar with, and to be pervaded by, the best thoughts of 
many minds in many ages." That "as a student he de- 
voted many hours of every day to the earnest, systematic 
pursuit of knowledge and selfculture. Two great writers, 
Carlyle in his lecture on, The Hero as a Man of Letters 
and Emerson in his Representative Men, have sketched 
the quiet dignity and devotion which mark the man who 
has accepted it as one of his duties to make the most of 
the intellect which God has given him. Mr. Lowell pre- 
sented a finished specimen of that ideal." 

I have found it very helpful and stimulating to dwell 
upon this character sketch, and to catch the spirit that 
animated Mr. Lowell in maintaining, all his life, the habits 
of a student. It is not hard to understand Mr. Lowell's 
conception of self-culture. Most ot us, in our best efforts, 



12 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 

are familiar with the temporary motives furnished by a 
specific task — a speech to be delivered, an article to be 
written, or with the motives of competition and immediate 
gain. Here was a man daily and habitually seeking larger 
power and larger knowledge, not to prepare for specific 
tasks, not in pursuit of a calling, but because he regarded 
himself a composite of faculties potentially capable of a 
large product, and he sought self-enrichment because he 
knew that the world had a right to demand, and did de- 
mand of him, as of every man, the largest possible output. 
His supreme business was to make the most of himself 
that he might honor the daily claims of others, that he 
might contribute full share to the sum total of useful ac- 
tivity in this world. 

This is somewhat different from the highest motives of 
effort of which we have heard in certain quarters. On the 
one hand, we have been told that the end of human en- 
deavor for every man, is the salvation of his soul. On the 
other, that self-perfection is the worthy and final end of all 
our effort. Each of these statements embodies a vital 
truth. But in each there is great danger of fatal error ; 
for a man may work at self-perfection until self fills his 
whole horizon ; and a man may be so intent on the salva- 
tion of his own soul as to lose his soul in utter selfishness. 
There is an ideal of self-perfection that passes into self- 
glorification. There is an ideal of salvation that makes a 
man self-centered, and small, and mean. Here was a man 
by whom the duty of self-perfection was taken for granted, 
not so much as an end in itself, as a means of entering 
into right relations with his fellowmen. Self-perfection 
was to him the normal pursuit of every man, in a universe 
where all men must cooperate. This was also the ideal of 
Matthew Arnold — that a man's culture does not ulti- 



THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 1 3 

mately concern the individual who possesses it, but the \ 
universe in which he Hves. The purpose of culture, he 
declares, is not "to make an intelligent being more intel- 
ligent," but rather "to make reason and the will of God 
prevail." A still better expression of this ideal of culture 
is that of a great Christian teacher who has it thus : — 
"That a man may be perfect — thoroughly furnished unto 
every good work." 

That the aim of culture is to prepare a man for good 
work and not chieily for enjoyment is familiar enough to 
every one who understands the spirit of modern education. 
Never has this thought been more operative in the minds 
of men than during the last twenty years. That men may 
be more perfectly fitted for every good work, the whole 
curriculum of the schools has been made anew. Every 
study has been made to stand and show cause why it should 
not be banished from the course, and new studies are offered 
to make good the deficiencies of the old plan. Our quar- 
rel with the old, was not so much because of what it did, 
as what it failed to do. It offered something more or less 
vague and general under the name of mental discipline. 
And it must be admitted that it accomplished some mag- 
nificent results under that name. But it ignored every- 
thing save mental training and mental power. The new 
understands that the soundness of one part depends on 
the soundness of all other parts, and so it seeks to train 
and strengthen the whole man. The old offered the 
higher training to those destined for two or three special 
pursuits. The new says that in every field of activity, 
men need the best training, the best instruction — that 
every good work, whether of teaching, or preaching, or 
building, or mining, demands a perfect man ; and that 
no education is worthy the name, that does not take ac- 



^4 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 

count of the whole man, that does not aim to put a man in 
the way not only of gaining most for himself, but of ren- 
dering to the world his largest possible output. 

The conception of how this is to be done has taken on 
distinctiveness and completeness within comparatively a 
few years. Many of us can remember the time when the 
general training of the mind, especially for a career in 
theology, medicine, or law, was believed to be the function 
of higher education. At that time it would have been 
accepted as an adequate definition of culture that it con- 
sists of a knowledge of the best that has been thought and 
felt in the world. But this was presently seen to be an 
inadequate sort of culture ; for a man might be familiar 
with " the best that has been thought and felt in the 
world " and yet be feeble in body, and unable to use eye 
or hand to any practical end. And so, to ensure physical 
soundness for its own sake, and because the body at its 
best was seen to be the indispensable helper of the mind, 
the playground was laid out, the gymnasium built, and 
physical training was officially recognized as a part of the 
student's work and privilege. Thus the system became 
one degree more nearly perfect, for whether it be done 
with the ax in the woods, or with the scythe in the field, 
with the oar, or in the gymnasium, that man is a more 
perfect man, a more truly cultured man, a better educated 
man, whose sound and well-trained mind dwells in and 
controls a sound and vigorous body. The department of 
physical training is now fully recognized as the indispen- 
sable ally of better scholarship, better morals, better 
manhood. 

But the rapidly growing and multiplying industries in 
which men engage, soon made it evident that mental and 
physical training do not educate the whole man. The 



THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 1 5 

mind's most wonderful instruments — the hand and the 
eye — must receive most careful education, if railroads are 
to be constructed, bridges built, safe business structures 
erected, and cities kept habitable. And it presently be- 
came evident that such training is to be valued, not only 
for these economic and practical ends, but as a part of 
general education. And so, to give men fuller command 
of themselves to train these instruments — the eye, the 
hand — to call out and educate all their latent power and 
make them do the bidding of the trained mind, manual 
training schools and polytechnic schools multiplied on 
every hand. Our conception of culture was by so much 
the broader, and men could be in a larger way made per- 
fect, thoroughly furnished for every good work. Along 
with this came also that wonderful opening up of fields of 
activity demanding the very highest endowments, the 
finest training, political science, economics, and the crown 
of sciences — sociology. Here is culture touching human 
life in real earnest. The schools must give training and 
instruction in these if they would furnish men for every 
good work. 

In comparison with all this, how ludicrously narrow was 
the conception of culture even in the day of Nathaniel 
Hawthorne. He hardly knew what to do with his college 
course when once he had concluded it. " For," said he, 
writing to his mother, " I cannot become a physician and 
live by men's diseases ; I cannot be a lawyer and live by 
their quarrels ; I cannot be a clergyman and live by their 
sins : I suppose there is nothing left for me but to write 
books." Doubtless he made the very best use of it. But, 
to-day, the man of culture need not hesitate to enter any 
field of human activity — every work demands the perfect 
man. 



l6 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 

Is our scheme of culture now complete? It provides for 
the training of mind and body, intellect, muscle, hand and 
eye ; it provides technical instruction and makes men 
masters of the sciences that touch the very constitution of 
society and seek its highest welfare. Is the scheme com- 
plete ? Will it guarantee all that is required of a man ? 
Suppose you know a man to be possessed of all that this 
can give him ; suppose him to be splendidly endowed, 
highly accomplished, perfectly trained — would you, with- 
out further guarantee, take him into your employ, place 
your interests in his hands, and give him your confidence ? 
His accomplishments and training tell what he has. Do 
they in the least tell you what he is, what he will do .-' 
Will he tell the truth ? Can you trust your money with 
him .'' Will he betray your confidence ? Ah, these are 
things that all the training of the schools, as we commonly 
conceive it, cannot guarantee ; yet these things must be 
guaranteed ; and you, as a business man, would rather 
take your chances with one of whose character you were 
assured, but of whose accomplishments you could learn 
nothing, than with the most highly accomplished man of 
whose character you had no knowledge. Evidently there 
is something that the complete scheme of the schools, as 
we have reviewed it, cannot do for us ; at its best, it stops 
short of entire fitness for life. 

Is not this precisely what it can do for a man.? It can 
put into his hands the means of doing something. It can- 
not in the least guarantee what that thing will be. One 
may have the highest endowments, the most perfect train- 
ing, entire command of every branch of knowledge, and 
technical skill ; another may have the same endowments 
and attainments. One may use what he possesses, to 
make men curse and women weep and children beg, and 



THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 1/ 

to bathe cities in blood ; the other may use the same to 
gladden hearts and homes, and make the deserts rejoice. 
Sharp instruments in the hands of a peaceable artisan will 
produce objects of beauty and utility; the same instru- 
ments in the hands of a villain will destroy life. And so 
what one may gain from what we understand by culture 
and training will be a good or an evil to him according to 
the use he makes of it. All this vastly increases the 
power of a good man to do good, but it no less greatly 
increases the power of an evil man to do evil. Culture 
and education are, therefore, not necessarily in themselves 
good, but only in the hands of the good and well-disposed. 
It is just here that we are forced to recognize the spirit- 
ual element in sound culture. Psychology, no less than 
religion, demands this recognition. It is just here that 
Christianity proposes to do its work for a man. But it 
undertakes to do only its own work — distinct, coordinate, 
cooperative. It does not propose to do everything. It 
may in a sense present the one thing needful — but by no 
means the only thing needful. It comes forward to super- 
sede not one of the elements of culture we have enu- 
merated, nor does it count them even secondary ; there 
must be the trained mind, the skilled hand, the sound 
body, the knowledge of what concerns men — but Christi' 
anity declares that there is one thing the world cannot 
do — it cannot teach a man how to use what it places in 
his hands. It may give him the means of splendid suc- 
cess, and he may turn it to his own and others' ruin. No, 
Christianity does not restrain men from the things that 
noble ambition seeks. It bids men seek these. But it 
does come forward to guide a trained mind and a skilled 
hand by a right and true heart. It does, what nothing 
else can do — it fixes the character. 



10 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 

This, then, is the place of Christianity in culture. It 
determines the attitude and the relation of the man him- 
self to life, and no one who knows anything of life can 
doubt for a moment the powerlessness of the ordinary 
appliances of culture to reach the heart and to fix the 
man's moral status ; and men everywhere declare that 
this is so when they demand other guarantees than those 
which the schools can furnish before they will take a man 
into their employ and give him their confidence. 

Let us not commit the error of supposing that, so far 
as knowledge is concerned, the intellect is the only faculty 
to be cultivated, that all else is, as we often say, mere 
sentiment. Not only is this untrue, but, further, there are 
vital truths touching the relations of man, which truths 
the logical faculty utterly fails to grasp, and a man may 
have the keenest intellect and the widest experience and 
yet be radically wrong in his whole estimate of life, 
because he fails to grasp truths that can be apprehended 
only by the spiritual faculty. 

Not long since, there passed away an American citizen 
whose judgment of men and whose experience of business 
made him a leader in that realm. He was a man of 
keenest intellect, yet his view of life made it possible for 
him to add millions to his millions by means hostile to 
society, and when he died he left not one farthing for the 
common good. And though the logical faculty decides 
that he had an undoubted right to follow this course, a 
higher faculty led not only the religious but the secular 
press all over the land to declare that his course was a 
crime against society. On the other hand, perhaps the 
greatest merchant in the world to-day has not, as an inti- 
mate friend of his has informed me, for many years per- 
mitted one dollar to be added to his private fortune. 



THE COLLEGR IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. I9 

What comes into his hands from his enormous business 
he understands to be committed to him for the common 
good to be devoted to benevolent and beneficent ends. 
And though the logical faculty would decide that no 
obligation rests upon him to follow this course, the spirit- 
ual faculty declares that it is vitally right and vitally 
necessary. 

In an address delivered to the working-men's college in 
London, Mr. Huxley in a single paragraph sketched in a 
wonderfully comprehensive manner the ideal of a liberal 
education. Said he, "That man I think has had a liberal 
education, whose body has been so trained in youth that 
it is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and 
pleasure all that as a mechanism it is capable of; whose 
intellect is a clear, cold logic engine, with all its parts of 
equal strength and in smooth working order, ready like a 
steam engine to be turned to any kind of work, and to 
spin the gossamers, as well as forge the anchors of the 
mind ; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the 
great and fundamental truths of nature and of the laws of 
her operations ; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life 
and fire, but whose passions have been trained to come to 
heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender con- 
science ; one who has learned to love all beauty, whether of 
nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to esteem others 
as himself." The schools are now prepared to do much 
of this for us, but where is the scheme of training that 
can guarantee that the man will hold his culture as "the 
servant of a tender conscience," and that he himself will 
be " one who has learned to love all beauty, to hate 
all vileness, and to esteem others as himself .'' " Yet if 
this be not done, how much better that the rest be not 
done. 



20 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 

Fellow-Students, let us insist, in season and out of 
season, on this dual nature of culture ; let us be content 
with nothing short of totality. Let us have " sweetness 
and light," and let us have also the sanctions of duty and 
conscience ; let us insist that education is of God, no less 
than religion ; that the message of the gospel to every 
man is " be ye perfect," that no man has a right to 
neglect the broadest culture and the best physical condi- 
tions attainable ; that while religion without culture is 
blind and misdirected, culture without religion is futile and 
mischievous and deadly. But that when to the trained 
mind, the skilled hand, the knowledge of the laws of 
human society or of art, there is added the personal pres- 
ence of the divine Spirit to soften, to restrain, to mold, 
and to guide — then, but surely not before, is a man 
entirely fitted to live in this world, to get the most out of 
life, to produce the most for others ; then, but not before, 
is he ready to contribute his full share to the work 
whereby at last in the home, in the state, in society, " rea- 
son and the will of God shall prevail." 

Do you say this is somewhat trite ? This is what we 
have heard, lo ! these many years ? Never was there 
more need of insisting upon it, and, happily, never more 
evidence that educators are coming to take account of it 
openly. It is now almost a truism to say that education 
means fitness for life, that its ideal is not merely training 
for a calling, not merely learning to do a particular thing, 
not merely mastering a department of knowledge as an 
end — but ability to sustain the relations of life. But we 
are even yet talking in our public associations and con- 
ventions of teachers as if a man were intellect and body 
and nothing else. We shall never be right in education 



THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 21 

until we frankly confess and take into account that man is 
spirit. How truly said President Whitman, in his inaug- 
ural address, " Godliness, I am certain, is the true support 
of manliness." Why should we seek to fit men and 
women for life and leave out of our view the very essence 
of the man } But can we provide for this in the visible 
machinery of the public schools ? That is of small con- 
cern. For we can, even in the public schools, take the 
truth into account, keep it ever in view, and work con- 
sciously with reference to it, for ourselves and for our 
pupils. 

The College, however, as no other institution, can do 
this directly, visibly ; the College has ever done this. 
And the growing consciousness that this element of edu- 
cation is not a separable and separate department, but 
vitally related to life, has, by natural selections called the 
princes of the land to the presidency of the colleges, and 
placed the wealth of the land in their hands. And their 
work is certain to be done. An inevitable law of human 
nature guarantees it, because this comes, not chiefly 
through special curricula, not through modifications in 
methods of study, but through personal contact of man 
with man. In this, college life is unique. Colby has 
done her work, and will continue to do it, because her 
teachers send themselves out, in some degree, in every 
man and woman who goes forth. Whatever changes time 
works in courses and methods, this supreme result of edu- 
cation — the making of men and women — is reached in 
the old way. Garfield said that a log with Mark Hopkins 
at one end and a student at the other is a university. 
Arnold, Wayland, Anderson, are living forces in the world 
to-day. Such as they are evermore the savor of English 



22 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 

and American life. Who that has known Charles 
Edward Hamlin does not this day feel his personality? 
Of him Wilkinson wrote, 

" I see him now, importunate, eager, bold 
" To push for truth, as most to push for gold. 

" Ideal Christian teacher, master, man, 

" Severely sweet, a gracious Puritan. 

" Beyond my praise to-day, beyond all blame, 

" He spurs me yet with his remembered name." 

James T. Champlin, Moses Lyford, not only are alive 
here where they wrought, but are abroad in power 
throughout the great West and Northwest. Such as they 
are the princes who rule that empire. And Colby alumni 
can add to the list the names of others, some of them here 
to-day, who, remembered not chiefly as classroom officials, 
but rather as companions in study, stamped their own 
admirable manhood upon the student with lasting impres- 
sion, and who commended learning by holding it, not as 
an end, but as "• the servant of a tender conscience," 
the instrument of " one who has learned to love all beauty 
. . . to hate all vileness, and to respect others as him- 
self." 

We often lament that the men and women of the old 
New England type are no more ; that those who stood for 
the simple, wholesome way of living, for the things that 
are true and honest and of good report, are gone from 
domestic, and social, and public life. And we ask, with 
apprehension, who and what will take their place .-* We 
need not fear. For the American college, itself the 
embodiment and perpetuation of the best of New Eng- 
land, will pour an ever fresh stream of health into our 



THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 23 

new and manifold life, and the health it carries will be the 
health of consecrated personal character, perpetuated in 
endless impressions. This is the only thing human that 
survives on earth. This alone is our lasting debt to this 
place. The campus will change, the willows will die 
the old buildings will crumble or be removed, new halls' 
will rise, strange faces will be seen and new voices will be 
heard here. The old bell will one day have sounded out 
Its last note. The things that are unseen are eternal 
Memory will lose the things that eye and ear give us' 
Like the echoes from Tennyson's "horns of Elfland 
faintly blowing," they die, 

" They die, in yon rich sky, 
" They faint on hill and field and river. 
" Our echoes roll from soul to soul, 
" They grow forever and forever." 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



002 281 694 9 



